Here We Go Again Play Want Bin (PWBE 6 Jan 2025)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

The weather isn't very fun to talk about today. Neither is politics.
Let's see if we can make this year pass by as painlessly as possible:

Play:
--=--

Undernauts Labyrinth of Yomi (PS5) - I think I've reached the end of
this particular entertainment experience. I'm about halfway through the
game and there's a specific boss battle where you're clearly outmatched
and outgunned, by a pair of enemies who can summon help over and over
again. Clearly the message is for you to run off and grind a bit more,
but now I've been through all the grinding areas and collected all the
stuff, and it's pretty repetitive and not at all entertaining at this
point. I can kind of see where the story is going, and it's not
interesting enough for me to want to stick with it unless I find out
that I'm missing some kind of obvious solution.

Want:
--=--

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: Remaster (PS5) - Ooh, the
disc just left Asia and is over the Pacific now. I don't even think that
I paid for the exorbitant shipping option.

Freedom Wars Remastered (PS5) - Out in a week! Ish. I'll get my copy
closer to the end of the month because it's a JPN-region disc. As far as
I can tell the US region isn't getting the disc at all, and that's
infuriating. This was literally my favourite Vita game and they're not
giving me an option to properly buy the new edition of my favourite Vita
game. If there's so much money in electronic entertainment why are they
making it harder and harder to get it in a shop?

Bin:
-==-

Resurfacing Blu-Ray discs - A copy of Forza Motorsport 5 wouldn't
install, and some light resurfacing revealed that the previous owner of
the disc festooned it with one of those thin plastic scratch-guard
sheets on the bottom, which has the effect of distorting optical lasers
by a small amount. Those also get scuffed up. I didn't realise the issue
until I heard little tiny shredded bits whizzing about in the machine. I
ruined two buffing pads on this particular learning exercise. And the
lesson I've taken away is that used Xbox One discs are never, ever worth
buying.

-KKC, who needs another month away from work, please.

[Russell Marks]

Kerbal Space Program (Linux) - pulled a mildly mad-scientist stunt to
regain contact with an old "lost" (uncontrollable) probe which had
lower-tech comms with middling range. It turns out that given how the
maths works, you can give a vehicle equivalent comms range to the
mighty Kerbal Deep Space Network (fully upgraded) by using just four
of the biggest relay dish parts. So if you go properly Kerbal with it,
i.e. pile on more relay dishes, you can massively outdo the DSN. With
32 of those dishes on a spacecraft, which is a bit hefty but not
unthinkable, suddenly you can contact a probe at Jool which has
(bizarrely) six of the 2Gm-range relay dishes. Then you can, say,
facepalm when you do your burn to get into Laythe orbit and realise
that you just threw away four of the dishes by doing that because of
your weird design with them split across stages (and a revised relay
ship at Kerbin to make up for it would now need 140 dishes to work).

Hitman: Codename 47 (PC) - got slightly further in this than when I
originally bought it back in 2014 and could barely run the thing.
That's right, I got through the tutorial, and even a mission after
that. As you play it you can sort of vaguely see how it developed into
the later games, which is nice, but it's all just so crude and
awkward. Anyway, my main goal with this is not to finish it
particularly, more to reach the Colombia levels (the only maps in the
game which weren't reused in Hitman Contracts). That means getting
through all the Hong Kong missions though, and the game seems to have
no mid-level saves of any kind. There's also a curious mechanic where
you build up money per hit, but each death costs you money. And it
seems like just exiting the game costs you as much as a death. With
joys like that in store, I wonder if I might end up shelving this one
for another decade.
To play Puzzle Agent 2 (PC) finally. Probably not the greatest game of
all time, but I liked the first (on PS3) and remember being fairly
annoyed that the sequel never got a console release.

To also get around to the rest of the backlog of PC games I've been
building up over the past few months. Which obviously won't happen,
but it's a nice idea at least.

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
If there's so much money in electronic entertainment why are they
making it harder and harder to get it in a shop?

I think what's needed is a resurgence of games released on tape. The
bits had a warmth to them you just don't get with a download.
My spellchecker acting like the KSP paragraph above was written in
some strange alien language. More so than usual, I mean.

-Rus.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Post by Russell Marks

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
If there's so much money in electronic entertainment why are they
making it harder and harder to get it in a shop?

I think what's needed is a resurgence of games released on tape. The
bits had a warmth to them you just don't get with a download.

All joking aside, I genuinely think that the lack of physical media has
a cost that the games publishers haven't considered and are suffering
for. If there are fewer discs out in the world, that means there are
fewer secondhand games to go around beacuse you can't resell a download.
What that means is that the financial barrier for entry into playing
games is higher, because you have to be either a launch buyer or a
bundle buyer. That means we're living in a distressing reality where
only relatively well-off people can buy games. But people with less
disposable income aren't in that state permanently, and if you price
them out of the hobby now then you don't have a reliable customer later
when they're more able to participate.

Of course, game publishers want you to buy the new thing now, and not
the thing they sold last year that doesn't net them any additional
margin. But I probably wouldn't be as dedicated to the hobby now if I
weren't able to amass the big collection of previously-owned Megadrive
and Saturn games that I have now. As they've always, always done, the
game companies are sacrificing a long-term gain in favour of tomorrow's
short-sighted financial goal.

Physical media matters. Not as a collectible or a rarity or a curiosity,
but as a regular thing that you can hold and pass around. This is
especially true in a world where you can't count on your Internet
connection to be reliable or your content steward to be in business
tomorrow. So unless the games companies want to take over home broadband
delivery and establish government-aligned archival and library services
for games, then the only possible justification for fewer discs and
cartridges in the world is naked greed. And I don't like coming to that
conclusion.

-KKC

[Russell Marks]

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
All joking aside, I genuinely think that the lack of physical media has
a cost that the games publishers haven't considered and are suffering
for. If there are fewer discs out in the world, that means there are
fewer secondhand games to go around beacuse you can't resell a download.
What that means is that the financial barrier for entry into playing
games is higher

As much as I do prefer downloads in most ways (especially DRM-free
ones, predictably enough), I agree. Logically you'd expect the
effective removal of resale to hurt the industry in the long run.

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
naked greed

Or shareholder value focus, as they might put it. :-)

-Rus.